[Illustration: Fig. 233.--Treaty of Arras, concluded in 1191, by the interposition of William of Champagne, Archbishop of Rheims, between Baldwin V., Count of Hainault, and Matilda of Portugal, Widow of Philip, Count of Flanders.--Miniature from the “Chroniques de Hainaut” (Fifteenth Century), Burgundian Library, Brussels.] When the Crusades brought about the concord, or rather the calm, of which the Church had so long been deprived, its progress became more regular, more marked, and more easy; it also suffered less from the encroachment of laymen upon its rights and privileges (Fig. 233), but the enormous expenses of these distant expeditions had ruined it. There was not, indeed, a single diocese where the property was not loaded with mortgages, nor where the services were not crippled by the reduction of the diocesan revenues. This penury, coupled with the absence of a great number of the most esteemed ecclesiastics, who had taken up the cross, left many important churches almost without resources or guidance; hence arose a general relaxation of morals on the part of the clerks, whose misconduct was in some cases so flagrant that it became necessary to expel them from the religious houses and parishes which had been committed to their charge. The abuses of authority, the uncertainty in point of faith, and the Vaudois heresy, which shot through Western Europe like a poisoned barb, gave rise to frequent dissensions amongst the faithful, the disputes being carried on even amongst members of the same family, whilst in many localities the people, attracted by a form of worship where the chanting and the prayers were recited in the vulgar tongue, deserted their parish church for the heretic priest; this was the origin of an infinity of disturbances and tumults in the large towns, especially in those governed by a municipality.